The Debtor: A Novel

by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

After all, it is something for a man to be able to call into life, even if under the force which includes him also, the new life of the spring. It is a power like that of a child in leading-strings, but still power. After the mother and son had gone away and he and his sister were still out in the cool, and the great evening star had come out and it was too dark to work any longer, for the first time he said something about the queer accounts in his books in Captain Carroll's office.

“I suppose it is all right,” he said, leaning a second on his hoe and staring up at the star, “but sometimes my books and the accounts I keep look rather—strange to me.”

“He pays you regularly, doesn't he?” inquired the sister. The question of pay could sting her from her numbness. Once there had been a period, years ago, before Carroll's advent, of no pay.

“Oh yes,” replied the brother. “He pays me. He has never been more than a week behind. Captain Carroll seems like a very smart man. I wonder where he lives. I don't believe anybody in the office knows. He went away very early this afternoon. I don't know whether he lives in the City or in the country. I thought maybe if he did live in the country he wanted to get home and go driving or something.”

It had been as the book-keeper surmised. Carroll had gone early to his home in the country with the idea of a drive. But when he reached home he found a state of affairs which precluded the drive. It seemed that young Eddy Carroll was given to romancing in more respects than one, and had not told the truth to Anderson when he had been asked if his family would feel anxious at his non-return to dinner. Eddy knew quite well that they would be anxious. In spite of a certain temperamental aversion to worry, the boy's mother and sisters were wont to become quite actively agitated if he failed to appear at expected times and seasons. Eddy Carroll, in the course of a short life, had contrived to find the hard side of many little difficulties. He had gotten into divers forms of mischief; he had met with many accidents. He had been almost drowned; he had broken an arm; he had been hit in the forehead by a stone thrown by another boy.

When Arthur Carroll reached home that afternoon he found his wife in hysterical tears, his sister trying to comfort her, and the two daughters and the maid were scouring the town in search of the boy. School was out, and he had still not come home. Carroll heard the news before he reached home, from the coachman who met him at the station.

“Mr. Eddy did not come home this noon,” said the man, with much deference. He was full of awe at his employer, being a simple sort, and this was his second place, his first having been with the salt of the earth who made no such show as Carroll. He reasoned that virtue and appearances must increase according to the same ratio. “Mrs. Carroll sent me to the school this noon,” said the man, further, “and the ladies are very much worried. The young ladies and Marie are out trying to find him.” Marie was the maid, a Hungarian girl.

“Well, drive home as fast as you can,” said Carroll, with a sigh. He reflected that his drive was spoiled; he also reflected that when the boy was found he should be punished. Yet he did not look out of temper, and, in fact, was not. It was in reality almost an impossibility for Arthur Carroll to be out of temper with one of his own family.

When Carroll reached home his wife came running down the stairs in a long, white tea-gown, and flung her arms around his neck. “Oh, Arthur!” she sobbed out. “What do you think has happened? What do you think?”

Carroll raised his wife's lovely face, all flushed and panting with grief and terror like a child's, and kissed it softly. “Nothing, Amy; nothing, dear,” he said. “Don't, my darling. You will make yourself ill. Nothing has happened.”